Land Ho!

Wow, we’re still getting a lot of good responses from all of you guys on all of theseassortedquestions! That’s awesome! We still really appreciate it. And here’s yet another one for you. This time, we’re after lands.

Again, nothing silver-bordered and no repeats please. In the comments, give us a land. Any land! Basic land, favorite land, best land ever, whatever you want is fair game. Just be sure you tell us why in the comment! No really, this is all going to make sense one of these days.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is one of those crazy Brian things. Yes it’s something we’re going to use later, no I’m not going to tell you why. You’ll see eventually, once we figure it out for ourselves. Whatever it is, it’s totally gonna be awesome though!

This is just a awesome and powerful land and effect. I saw this come out in Zendikar and had to build a big nasty white deck with this in mind. It’s awesome artwork and reanimates anything for free so long as you ramp up to seven lands, who doesn’t love that???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotto. The Romans used grottoes to house religious artifacts. Garden grottoes today are especially common in religious gardens, with the grotto being used to display religious icons or to house an altar.

Mechanically, there are quite a number of cards with off-color flashback costs (Travel Preparations, etc). Also, any common color-fixing is welcome in limited.

I mainly played casually when I first started, and didn’t that much on cards, so was very pleased when they brought out a colour fixing land at common. It is probably the card I own the most copies of, and it usually goes into most casual decks with more than one colour.

Widely considered one of the worst cards in magic (and with good reason) I am not in any sense of the word decreeing that you all should go out and slap a four of in all your decks, that is not what this is about, this is about the fact it’s awesome.

Primarily due to the art, Look at that art! It picturesquely describes the card, you have two completely separate engagements, one of a Dragon Burninating a Hapless Peasant, and one with a Sorcerer befuddling and bemusing a band of intrepid warriors, all of a sudden BLAM! The creatures are swapped The Dragon, deprived of his meal is now faced with a challenge and the wizard no longer has the upper hand against the warriors and is perplexed at the now arrival of the charred villager.

Secondly because I have always wanted to build the icy manipulator donate sorrows path deck, I don’t know why I just do, but I never got round to it. I’ve thrown a copy of Sorrow’s path into a couple of EDH’s and actually to good effect. It has occasionally come in useful, generally in other peoples combats but useful none the less.

P.S Mike, You should totally rock one of these in your Fumiko deck, A deck full of dragons and walls that forces other people to attack? Perfect!

Going to go with Hall of the Bandit Lord. It’s an incredibly powerful card, although its cost makes it a tad unwieldy to use. You never want to drop it until the turn before you want to murder someone with something horrible, although it does telegraph your next punch. Hopefully, though, that punch will be so damn fast they won’t be able to do a thing about it.

My favorite deck for this is my Soramaro deck, because giving Soramaro haste is a terrifying thing.

Tolaria West. It’s an Island when you need the blue mana, and a tutor for the Ancestral Visions/Everflowing Chalice/whatever 0-drop/land you need.
also its flavor– after the destruction of the academy of Tolaria, a new one has been rebuilt in another island and research is back on track. I was actually debating internally if i was going to choose this or Academy Ruins…

Thawing Glaciers is such a good basic land fetch. Allowing you to land tutor every other turn is great to thinning out your deck. Adding it with Amulet of Vigor just will speed it up even more letting you tutor every turn.

I chose this land because it’s flavorful, and its flavor fits its mechanic and function quite well (it uses cadavers for mana). Plus, this land is a sort of built-around-me card, and I like cards like that. Add to the fact that it is not legendary making combo possibilities really nice. Way back in Zendikar/Shards of Alara standard, I was Banefiring people from the Crypt that felt nice.

This was the land that really hit me over the head with how flavor and card name can really work with the mechanics.

I was playing in a friendly Ice Age sealed deck at my bachelor party (it was the new set at the time, too, MAN I am gettin’ old!). I had a decent deck that usually killed with a flying Hyalopterus Lemure. I remember playing Ice Floe in at least 2 rounds where I was able to send their wolf or Kraken or some other assorted beasties out onto the ice, never to attack me again. Nice. It is kinda slow, but I like that the card works on all levels.

I only suggest this card because a member of my playgroup has this is every deck. The only time this card is dead is when your opponents have no creatures. I know it can be annoying when you need one more mana and cannot tap the Maze for it, but it can really swing the game in your favor.

Reliquary Tower. Possibly the best land to have in an EDH deck save for Maze of Ith. Any time you have more than 7 cards in hand, you can just keep them, and it’s not nearly as threatening as Urborg or Cabal Coffers, so it draws almost no hate. Yeah, it’s colorless, but for that bonus, who cares?